PEARLS OF FRIENDSHIP

I made three fieldwork gathering trips to Apalachicola, Florida, last year. During my first trip, I made a friend.

A. L. Quick has been an oysterman all of his life. He works the Apalachicola Bay, tonging for oysters, every day that there's good weather. His wife, Gloria, shucks his catch. Every once in a while, Gloria finds a pearl in one of the hundreds of oysters she opens in a day. That's A. L.'s hand, holding a couple of those pearls in the photograph above. He gave those two pearls to me the very first time we met. Almost a year later, he and Gloria sent me a care package. It was filled with shells and necklaces and pearls.

Those pearls have been sitting in a bottle on a shelf at my house for months now. I treasure them. But it does seem like they're fit for some greater purpose: jewelry. She doesn't know it yet, but I think I'm going to commission my friend Magally to make me a necklace, using these pearls.

Beads and baubles aside, if you ever get the chance, you should make a trip to Apalach. It is a glorious place. Unfortunately, though, it's one of those places that is changing so fast that the locals are being squeezed out. It's that same old real estate game: everyone wants to live by the water, but they easily forget that quite a few folks make their living on the water. That living--the oystering, the shrimping, the wading for scallops--is all on the brink of disappearance. And so are people like A. L. and Gloria Quick. They are the truest, most genuine and generous people I have ever met. We hope to get down there to pay them a visit sometime soon, but it will never be soon enough.